MONTREAL — Thomas Mulcair is no Champagne socialist. Sure, the federal NDP leader practised law before entering politics, and he has a penchant for classical music. But at the age of 14, he learned what it is to sweat for minimum wage, toiling nine-hour days in a Montreal textile plant.

Apart from the pocket money — back in 1969, a wage of $56.25 a week was, he remembers, “a princely sum” — the young Mr. Mulcair took away a lasting lesson from the experience.

“That was quite tough work,” he recalled in a recent interview. “It was the best incentive you could possibly have to keep your nose to the grindstone and get through your studies, because you realized you were going to have a much different life if you didn’t.”

Those familiar with Mr. Mulcair, 57, would not be surprised to learn it was his gift of the gab that helped land him his first summer job. A student at Laval Catholic High School, he was part of a student group called Paladin, organized by the school chaplain. They would hold retreats, meet to discuss current events and go out into different Montreal neighbourhoods to do community work.

“I had given a speech to a large meeting of the B’nai Brith, and there was a fellow in the textile business there who wound up finding summer jobs for a whole bunch of us,” Mr. Mulcair said.

I come from a family of 10 kids, so we all had jobs early to be able to have spending money

That was how he ended up on the factory floor at the now defunct Skirt Togs Industries on Meilleur Street in Montreal’s garment district. Fourteen might seem a tender age to be working in a sweatshop, but times were different. “I come from a family of 10 kids, so we all had jobs early to be able to have spending money,” he said.

He had paper routes from the age of 10 through CEGEP, but carrying around a bag of Montreal Stars was child’s play compared with hauling bolts of cloth to the cutting tables. (Don’t let anyone tell you the Opposition leader has nothing in common with his Conservative rival: Stephen Harper’s office, while declining to get into details about the prime minister’s summer jobs, did reveal that from the age of 10 to 17, Mr. Harper “was a delivery boy for the Toronto Star.”)

For Mr. Mulcair, the textile job offered a glimpse into a world foreign to a child from a middle-class suburban family.

“I remember there was another kid there who was 14, but he wasn’t going back to school. That was going to be his job. You learn that there are people who start out in life far different than you do,” he said.

He did not return to the schmatte trade, but for four years during CEGEP (Quebec’s junior college system) and university he had another backbreaking job in construction, doing tar-and-gravel roofing.

Today, his advice to students is that a summer job can offer an education as well as a paycheque.

“It’s the experience of seeing how other people live … what life is like in a work environment that you’re not going to spend the rest of your life in if you’re just doing it as a summer job to pay your studies, and to realize how lucky you are,” he said.

And should you ever enter politics, it could come in handy.

“When I visit a factory, I can’t claim that it was my life work, but I at least have some taste for how hard those people are working, and it has instilled in me a great respect for them,” he said.